I have never used a flail mower, so I cannot make any comment about them; good or bad. However, as I've mentioned before, I took exactly 1 contract mowing a highway median that began .5 miles from my house and went for 5 miles. To be polite, I lost my hind end on that job! I hit everything possible hidden in 3' tall grass it seems, including rotted deer carcasses, rocks, plenty of disgarded trash, a dang section of barb wire about 50' long and, the worst, several "gatorbacks" (as I learned they are called), the retread part off of semi tires. Besides the potential damage to my equipment, it took 6 full hours with 2 people working to get a 'gatorback' out from under a rotary mower being pulled by a 120 hp PTO tractor!
I'm not sure we ever got a single mowing completed without issues. Litterbugs really tick me off. If you don't clean up the litter before/after you cut, it looks terrible and sometimes I wouldn't get paid until I cleaned up the mess. My contract was to mow; period. Nowhere in the contract did it say that I was the caretaker of 5 miles of median and that I would fill two dumptrucks with trash each time I mowed. God bless the guys who make a living doing such jobs! It is NOT an easy way to make a living. I won't bore anyone with the numerous stories I can tell from just one season, but it sure wasn't easy work. Unless flail mowers are extremely tough, I don't see how they would work well for cutting tall grass; especially if you don't know what you may find in that grass. Again, I've never used a flail mower, so that's just my opinion.
With all but one highway right of way mowing contract I have, we're required to walk the roadside and pick up all the "garbage". The issue isn't so much the possibility of flying objects as it is shredded garbage that would be left after mowing. I sub-contract that chore, but it's still my resonsibility. The issue of flying debris is blown WAY out of proportion. As I've posted several times, the numbers just don't bear out the sensationalism and drama a few people would lik eyou to believe. Odds of being hit with flying debris from a highway mower is 200 times LESS LIKELY than being struck by lightning. So the safety issue is really not so much of an issue. What IS a safety issue is equipment, trucks, and employees being struck by passing cars and trucks. I need to get the job done and get out of the cross hairs. Plodding along with a slow, inefficient, high maintenance boondoggle of a "mower" INCREASES the chances of an accident rather than promoting safety.
When I started bidding highway work, I had the idea (from some of the sales propaganda I heard on here no less) that I could market the concept of increased safety by using flail mowers. I contacted Tiger Mfg, the #1 name in commercial mowing equipment. They sell EVERYTHING you need or want. They brought me 3 rear mounted Alamo flails to demo, as well as 1 complete mowing rig. (8' rear flail/7' side mounted flail/120hp tractor) to run along side of a 75hp tractor with a 15' batwing as a direct comparison. The operators involved were myself, a rep from Tiger Mfg., my son, and one other operator who I consider my best. We took turns on each mower so as to get an equal baseline.
End result; 75hp/15' bat wing would mow double the acreage on less fuel, and with less that 60% initial purchase price. Life expectency (as predicted by Tiger) for the flails are less than half the time I already KNOW I'll get from the 15' bat wings. And daily maintenance and repairs wasn't even close to being comparable. In a little over 80 hours, the bat wing was "down" for approx 30 minutes while we changed a tire. Flail rig was down for 2 full days at one point. (knives needing replacing, bearing siezing, hydraulic leak, ect...) In the end, the flail mower of equal width (but double the cost once you factor in operating cost) produced less than half the volume of work in the same amount of time, with no noticable difference in quality of work done......
Under IDEAL conditions, there would have been more parity. But we don't mow in ideal conditions. Under real world conditions....not so much....And my comparisons were done with what is considered the highest quality commercial grade flail mowers available....Not with consumer grade junk. The bat wing was a mid level Bush Hog 2615L....Not even a 2715L.....Just a mid grade bat wing.
For someone who mows 3 or 4 acres of well maintained grass, maybe 3 times a year, the law of averages says you can PROBABLY get away with mowing with ANYTHING. I'm just not into "probably" or "maybe" when I spend what I'd consider big bucks. So far this season, my mowing rigs have logged over 4800 hours in varying conditions. I seriously doubt there's a collective yearly total of hours amongst all participating in this thread to equal the hours of results I have to base my opinion upon. I'm making a decent profit. If I bid the same work with consideration towards using flail mowers, NONE of the contracts would have been mine. NONE.....There is simply NO ROOM for bids that are double (or more) than what is a competitive bid.
Quality of work done; My rotaries perform at or above required standards for ALL of my customers, as well as the excellent results I get on my OWN property.
And with consideration towards the issues that make flails uncompetitive in my business, I SURE wouldn't want to deal with the same issues in my "spare time", whatever that is....
"Liabilities" far exceed any alleged "assets" that a flail mower might have.
